Wrong Side of the Grass

A truck hijacking on a New York street goes badly awry in this new novel from an author who writes “top-notch hard-boiled crime fiction” (Booklist).   It was a sure thing. A truck with a thousand cartons of cigarettes, at a wholesale price of sixty dollars each. Mike Tedesco had thought through the foolproof plan for the early-morning hijacking. The only tricky part was disabling the GPS system that enabled the owner to track the truck and its valuable contents. He brought along the expert who swore he could do it in three minutes. He couldn’t, so Tedesco shot him dead in the middle of the rainy street in uptown Manhattan before fleeing the scene.   NYPD Detective Dante Cepeda is called in and quickly decides he can solve this one—his great joy—as he explains to the attractive redheaded sergeant who works the case with him. The hunt leads Cepeda to a Russian mafioso, Tedesco’s gorgeous girlfriend,  a curse that needs a blood sacrifice, and a scarred pit bull who’s survived a life of dogfights. A gritty tale of greed and casual violence, the latest crime novel from the Hammett Prize nominee is realistic, shocking, and relentlessly compelling.   “Solomita knows his city and his people, and he writes with both muscle and sensitivity.” —Los Angeles Times   “A keen observer of humanity.” —Publishers Weekly   “A master at capturing on paper the flavor of streetwise cops and robbers and their victims.” —Library Journal   “Solomita has Elmore Leonard’s flair for letting you view the world through his character’s eyes, no matter how narrow or how bloodshot.” —The New York Times

Stephen Solomita (b. 1943) is an American author of thrillers. Born in Bayside, Queens, he worked as a cab driver before becoming a novelist in the late 1980’s. His first novel, A Twist of the Knife (1988) won acclaim for its author’s intimate knowledge of New York’s rough patches, and for a hardboiled style that raised a gritty look at urban terrorism above the level of a typical thriller. Solomita wrote six more novels starring the disaffected NYPD cop Stanley Moodrow, concluding the series with Damaged Goods (1996). Solomita continued writing in the same hardboiled style, producing tough, standalone novels like Mercy Killing (2009) and Angel Face (2011). Under the pseudonym David Cray, he writes gentler thrillers such as Dead Is Forever (2004), a traditional mystery in the mode of Ellery Queen. His most recent novel is Dancer In The Flames (2012). He continues to live and write in New York City.